list-unsubscribe
I have a gift for you this holiday season: A bonus mini-webinar, covering a topic that people keep asking me about: The List Unsubscribe header, and specifically, how does it work and what do platforms need to implement to be in compliance with the new 2024 Gmail and Yahoo sender requirements? It’s 23 minutes of … just me! Talking about list-unsub! Sorry, not sorry. I collected every single thing I could think of, everything I’ve read, tested myself, and even added a few things suggested by friends, and now you get me walking you through every single thing I can think of about the list-unsub header. Why a recorded webinar? It’s a bit of a test. I have a whole bunch of information that I wanted to share on the topic and I didn’t want to write a fifteen page blog post that surely nobody would slog their way through.
Here’s an updated version of a guide I put together back in 2016 to help folks understand how the list-unsubscribe functionality works on Apple Mail on iOS.It was back in 2016 that we learned that Apple planned to add list-unsubscribe support to Apple’s iOS email client, and that support came with iOS 10. Many ESPs have long supported a special header, the “list unsubscribe” header. Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook.com, along with some other email clients or platforms, look for this header, and if it is found, they’ll put some sort of prominent “unsubscribe” link or button in a special place in their user interface. At Gmail, in particular, this header tends to show only for “good” senders, so if you’re a sender and you do see this extra unsubscribe link when sending to Gmail subscribers, know that Gmail probably considers your mail stream to be a wanted and safe one.
Last week I talked about one-click unsubscribe and why I don’t think it’s a great process. Basically, my concern is bot clicks. I’ve seen it happen too many times — email security software will scan an email message body and follow all the links in the message. This triggers a one click unsub and can result in people falling off of an email list. Does it happen in the millions? Possibly not, but when it happens to the client when trying to send to themselves, and suddenly their CEO or CMO is mad that messages are no longer be received, it results in a client angry at a CRM or ESP platform. It’s pain, and it’s self-inflicted pain, and a smart sending platform should try to prevent this pain.TL;DR? One click should really be two click. Go read my prior “hot take” for more details.Anyway, a couple of ISP/MBP (mailbox…
I was talking to friends running an ESP platform the other day, helping them understand the difference between the available types of list unsubscribe headers, what does it all mean and how does it all work. Might you find that interesting as well? Let’s see.List-unsubscribe: What is it? It’s a hidden email header. Originally specified in RFC 2369, the goal was to provide a hook that email clients could use to display an unsubscribe option to subscribers in a method and location that was easy to find and common from message to message. I can’t speak for the creators, but I imagine the goal is to make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe, so that they don’t turn to clicking the “report spam” button instead, out of frustration. TL;DR? It’s basically a declaration of how a standardized “Unsubscribe” button in an email client should work.It’s been around a while (the spec…